To The wedding experience.
Well, how to start on what my wedding memories are and will be forever… besides the fact that I either laugh at how ridiculous the situation had been, or cry because everything was just a mess.
You I have very rarely ran in to a customer service nightmare like this. Let’s start with our first few calls with your company. I requested the information, and got a nice brocure, we went though the laws of the ports picked out a cruise, and decided. That was all pretty easy, on our side. Now, speaking with Princess Rolle is a completely different idea. She booked us, but we would find out some months later on the wrong year, and we almost paid for a wedding that no one would be there for. She sent us a conformation showing the correct year, in the email, but somehow we were listed for 2007 which was a year early. We booked 2 years in advance… ok I know that sounds like a long time, but coordinating nearly 70 people from all over the United States to go on one vacation, and all get there on time takes some planning, and we’re planners...
I was so upset when I got the email that said that my wedding was coming up april 2007 and she hadn’t received any of my paperwork. I called and was upset, of course we had already paid 1680.00 dollars for a wedding, and this person was telling me it was the wrong year. Well when I asked to speak with a supervisor I was told point blank. “If you get hostile I can cancle your wedding and refuse to rebook it.”
Looking back, I should have just canceld the entire thng and booked it some other way. As a PRINCESS CRUISE LINES employee I was pretty astounded at how I was being treated. I paid 2 years in advance, I booked, I was all ready to go and planning away an error happened and when I called in Princess was Rude to me trying to make it out like it was my fault. Then I ask to speak with a supervisor and I am treated in that manner… I should have known nothing else would be done correctly.
Ok, so let’s move on. I finally was booked the right ship the right date and everything. We call again just to make sure we’ve turned in everything we’re supposed to. We’re told we have to send in our information sheet and the marriage license sheet. We fax it in and call the next day to confirm. We figure everything is going fine… a few weeks later we call to figure out the wedding cake and everything for our guests, (I’ll talk more about that later too..) We are told again that our information sheet was not in, again we faxed it. This process took almost 2 years and several faxes before it was really received although it was confirmed several times. We were told once by a young women that they lost our paperwork and to please refax it. We did again. Every time we called we encountered rude and unhelpful people. I think there was one gentalman once who wasn’t rude.
Ok so now we’re a few months out from the wedding, and we’ve had to change our numbers a few times, and had to ask a lot of questions, but we’re thinking we’re dong everything right. We live on the west coast so calling the wedding experience is a little hard saying they close at 7 eastern and aren’t open on the weekend. Usually you would spend and average of 30 min on hold listening to them talk about what a wonderful experience and stress free it is to plan with them. Ok, so we’ve gotten everything or so we think worked out, we call every few weeks and ask if there is any thing we’re missing, and the answer is always nope your all set. Now we’re a month or so before the wedding and I call again. I happen to be home from work really sick, and the lady says “everything’s fine, you’ve got your marriage license right?” I almost drop the phone and stop breathing. NO we paid the wedding experience 2 years ago to file for that since we live in Washington. “oh… she says, well, can you fax over the application again?” again??? Ok so 9th time’s a charm right? We send it over again, and now we’re getting nervous, what happens at a wedding if there’s no paperwork? A ceremony, and a few weeks later a justice of the peace? (we did plan for that if we needed to) My mother calls again and asks if everything is done, and they say no we need to fax in our information sheet for the brides maids and the ceremony type. (again I’ll address this later) My mother faxes this form in again, along with the guest list they didn’t ask for it, but she thought she’d just send it in again for safety sake. We’ve now faxed the same papers 13 times to the same number and printed out 13 confirmations of recept. I almost know the fax number by heart. And we wait.
We call again, and we are told that our marriage licence was overnighted to us, and that we have to have it sent back befor the wedding (this is 10 days before we leave)
The wedding experience sends this to the wrong address neglecting to put an apartment number on the package and fed ex holds it another night, (9 days before we leave) We get off work and drive around on the eight day trying to find it, we find it, and run to the bank 3 min before closing and get it notarized, and then drive to a fed ex where we reovernight it, since the note inside says if it’s with in 30 days to overnight it. We paid 50 dollars to have it overnighted with signature required. We wanted to MAKE SURE it was there. So this paper is finially there, actually I call to confirm and I’m told it’s not there, but since I called fed ex first and verf it was signed for I did have to tell the person on the phone who signed for it, and they again had to go find it. This is all supposed to be stress free right? Not being able to find my marriage linsence for a few days before the wedding is a little nuts.
From the very beginging fo this process we had been requesting the latest wedding allowed in Key west, and we were told that we were the one’s who were booked first, . So when the finializer called my mother and gave her the 9 am wedding time my mom almost flipped. We had been on that cruise before and were aware of the immigration for key west that occurs firs thing in the morning and we didn’t want our wedding to be in the middle of all of that. We had requested this over and over and over. So she changed it to 3:30 and everything should have been fine.
So the day before we leave we get an email that we are supposed to sign and send back, it’s a copy of “everything” included in our package, and a run down of the ceremony. We notice that the ceremony is not the one we picked, but 24 hours prior to leaving we didn’t have time to email back that it wasn’t right, then wait 42 hours for a response we would have been in SouthBeach by then. So we fixed what we could and sent it off, not that the changes we made were fixed on board, they were still all wrong. On board we met with our Royal Caribbean person and told her everything that was going wrong, she tried to get an Idea of what the flowers were for us, 3 days of cruising and 3 days of calls and emails and still no one would tell me… She says what color do you just not want. I said NOTHING PURPLE PLEASE…
A few specific situations…. The flowers… I called a few times and I was assured that they would take my wedding colors and they would match the tropical flowers to my colors so that they wouldn’t’ stand out too much. I asked quite a few times, I even asked on board and no one could give me an Idea of what the boquet would look like but still I was assured that they wouldn’t be something too far out there. I got bright purple flowers with birds of paridice and who knows what else. They were hiddous no bride would be proud to walk down the isle with those, and the funny thing I said every time, I just don’t want purple. I hate purple flowers… with a huge passion I prayed and prayed and prayed they weren’t purple…. And they were…
So this is 10 min before my wedding when I see these flowers, and there’s a coordinator and the officant in my room, and I start crying. The coordinator starts yelling at me for crying and my mom tells her to please stop and she talks very condescending to my mother how she has to finish what she has to say. She was on her cell phone the entire time, and it was ringing, and she was yelling at me though this 5 min meeting… very much worth the 150 dollars she made on us? OH ok, so we had 59 people and had t pay an extra 300 dollars in coordinators, when she got there we asked where the others were and she said she’s the only one and there’s two weddings. So we WERE not only lied to again but forced to pay for a service that wasn’t there. She wasn’t even at my wedding since the other wedding was happening at the same time. I couldn’t even find her to make sure that the lisncs was signed… we wanted my son to sign his name as a witness again something we told them, and was never done. Another 300 dollars well spent?
We chose to do our own music for 2 of the songs, and we ordered roses for the mom’s. We told the officiate that we were just going to give them to them after the ceremony, not in any kind of special thing, but when we gave them a hug. (this will come up again later) As my father and I are standing there waiting to walk down the isle… the wrong music plays, we stand there, and wait, and wait, and wait, then finally my dad yells “how about here comes the bride” that starts to play and we walk together laughing, He’s asked who gives this women to be married, he said her family and I, and I take scotts hands, and am handed the roses which were supposed to be white and were yellow. I stood there big eyed and confused what I am supposed to do with the roses now? So we go and hand them to the mothers whch was not what we had planned. This was a weird part of the ceremony, but liveable, though our entire ceremony they kept playing a few seconds of the songs, not the whole song not the right song, but just a few seconds of each of the two songs. We laughed though the entire ceremony because everything had been such a mess. We finally exchange vows, and they play the wrong song again, for the resessional which is funy because there are only 2 songs on the cd, one for the ceremony and one for the ressional, they get the right song playing and we walk man and wife… ok so we’re married, and we dance, and everything should be as it is. We cut the cake, which we paid extra for 2 cakes and were supposed to have a small cake for the bride and groom, we were told it would be deliverd to our state room and it never was, another thing we paid for that wasn’t deliverd. Our photographer was rude, and took horrible pictures, which is another point. After the wedding we spent over an hour taking photos, and then were told to be there at 7:15 to look them over, we picked out our 10 photos, and we didn’t order any extra, there weren’t many more that were worth keeping. We are told to come back to the photo store at 8 am to pick them up, we go and the store is closed, we had to run around the ship for 40 min to find them, and when we did they weren’t the pictures we picked out. We are missing two of the pictures we wanted… but the cruise was over and there was no way to fix it. The entire wedding was a mess, and our experience was not stress free. The people we had to work with were rude and I hate to say I wouldn’t suggest it to anyone. Unfortuatly as a princess employee I field calls all day long, and have to give out the wedding experience number, I’m not allowed to tell them about my experience, because it’s not good service, because our company uses the wedding experience as well. If I were to do this over again I would NEVER go with this company. I am horribly disappointed with the situation and the way thigns went. It was a lot of undue stress and horrible experiences after another. I know I’m not the only one, since I have been doing research and found that there are other brides that have had the same issues. I really hope that something can be done to make other brides weddings better. I will forever remember the mess that was my wedding…
I feel that we are due some kind of reparation; this letter is going not only to the wedding experience but also to royal Caribbean and to princess. I think it is important for them all to know what kind of experiences my customers have, as well as yours.
An unhappy bride
Becky jo DoRan |
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